While we aren’t quite crazy enough to enter the 24 hour national time trial championships, myWindsock has decided to sponsor them and as such, we thought it would be a good idea to take a look into what it is, how you might prepare for a 24 hour time trial and go through some practical tips. It’s weirdly hard to get the “mainstream cycling media” if there is such a thing to cover these events but personally, I find the idea that anyone would even want to enter into a competition where you have to ride for 24 hours continuously interesting. 

---

What is a 24 hour time trial?

On the face of it, the rules are quite simple… 

• Riders start individually at one-minute intervals.
• Each rider attempts to ride as far as possible within 24 hours, starting from their individual start time.
• The winner is the rider who covers the greatest distance.

There are a couple of circuits used – one for daytime, a safer one for night time and a simple finishing circuit to help timekeepers count laps. Each rider’s distance is measured by counting completed laps and using the rider’s last known position when 24 hours elapse. 

Other than that, they start in the morning and ride until the following morning. 

How can you even prepare for such an event?

A 24 hour time trial is an extremely complex problem. Your main physiological limitation is energy availability – you’ll be burning more energy than you can take in and what you take in will be limited by what your gastro-intestinal system can tolerate (and one might imagine that 24 hours of gels would cause a bit of stress in that department but we’ll get onto what to eat later). Completing back to back long rides (i.e. 8 hours Saturday then another 8 on Sunday), GI training on long rides (12+ hour rides with race nutrition) and strength training to improve muscular endurance and glucose uptake will all help this. 

There are other things to consider too, with the race being so long there are psychological and neurological factors at play – anxiety over the distance, the very real effects of sleep deprivation. A study by Jugovac and Cavallero in 2012 showed that 24 hours of total sleep deprivation significantly impaired executive control in attention tasks, while leaving other attentional networks largely unaffected. This means a cyclist’s ability to make decisions, plan, and manage effort (executive control) will be significantly impaired, even if basic alertness or reaction to stimuli (like steering or responding to road conditions) remains relatively intact. A robust plan is key here in order to limit the necessity for executive control, your decision making will be massively compromised so simply limit the number of decisions you have to take in the moment and take them in the run up to the event. These are things like when and what to eat, how much power to ride at and making sure you have the route in your head unit or very squarely in your memory.

How should I pace it?

You are unlikely to negatively split a 24 hour time trial and typical pacing advice of going a little over threshold on the climbs and recovering on the downhills doesn’t really apply. The key to pacing a 24 hour TT is to start slow and slow down as little as possible. Conventional advice is to start at “normal endurance ride” pace – around 55-60% of your FTP. Most riders will go out way too hard. 

Coming up with a distance schedule of reasonable low and high estimates (along with average power for these) is one way of ensuring that you don’t start too hard as well as alleviating the inevitable panic when people are ahead of you at 6 hours. 

This leads us on to mental pacing – a 24 hour race is long but splitting your plan into 6 hour macro-chunks each of 2 hour micro-chunks will make it more manageable. It also allows you to know where you should be roughly during each block, what you should eat and when you should stop if needed. 

What should I eat?

A good fueling plan for a 24-hour time trial is the difference between riding strong into the night… or falling apart at hour 10. The main difference between a 24 hour TT compared to any other, even a 12, is the fact that you have other considerations than just getting down as many carbohydrates as humanly possible. There are consequences to just eating gels for 24 hours in terms of muscle preservation, recovery, mental function, and gut comfort. A low level of protein intake every 6-8 hours (around 15g would probably do it – roughly half a scoop of protein shake) could reduce muscle breakdown and improve mental clarity. Fat isn’t needed in large amounts during the ride, but a total absence can cause GI discomfort (lack of fat can delay gastric emptying in some) and contribute to brain fog. You need to fuel your brain AND your legs – this is unique to a 24 hour TT. 

Keep the plan simple – a peanut butter sandwich and a bit of protein every 6 hours, 60-90g of carbs (more if you can hack it) on the bike with electrolytes. Make sure you have food that you like – you’re going to consume a LOT. Many riders will easily surpass 10,000 kcal over the duration of the race – some will burn double that. That’s a huge amount of food. Prepare a large variety with known macronutrient contents.

So, what is “the truth” about ultra endurance time trials?

The reality is, ultra endurance time trials are not just a physical test. It’s a game of who can be the most prepared in all aspects, from the gastro-intestinal to the psychological. You will slow down, you may even hallucinate and your ability to operate on zero sleep and a large calorie deficit will be tested.

If none of that has put you off, and you’re a UK based reader of our blog, you can enter the National 24 hour TT championships here – entries are open for another 4 weeks at the time of writing. If you want to be as prepared as possible for your next race, whether or not it’s a 24 hour TT – sign up to myWindsock!